(I told earlier in this series of how wrenching it felt to me when, in 2004, I felt called away from the work of creating wholeness -- a project I called "Mapping the Sacred," as introduced by an essay/sermon titled "Our Pathways into Deep Meaning" -- because of what I felt was the urgent need to call out the destructive force then ascendant in the American power system.)
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Karen Berlin:
I hope your vacation/reunion time in Seattle is renewing.
I agree with your six points, summarized as:
- Evil is a force
- Evil moves toward a pattern of brokenness
- Evil force works to expand its domain
- Evil force is coherent--different elements reinforce one another
- Force of evil exploits brokenness to expand its influence
- Human expression of evil is negative qualities/behavior
We have different interpretations as to the origin of the evil force, but no disagreement on its existence and features or how it works.
The question I look forward to having answered in future installments is how is the force of good leveraged/maximized to "win" over evil. Classic age old plot, I know, good versus evil, but what you have outlined well in this piece is that evil exists, grows, seizes dominion and power. The question to be answered then is how is it battled and how does "good" maintain its foothold in humanity.
Andy Schmookler:
I wish, Karen, I could promise you some great insight into "how is the force of good leveraged/maximized to 'win' over evil." I am not sure if there are any important strategic propositions that would have general usefulness. More likely, different situations create different kinds of opportunities, which "the good" can seize with different kinds of moves.
A pope from Poland might instill some moral charisma into the Soviet Empire, with the eventual effect of dissolving a tyrannical system. A carpenter from Nazareth might preach a way of looking at value that is like a diametrical opposite of the spirit that arises out of the process described by "the parable of the tribes." Two great war leaders -- Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill -- can find the moral rhetoric and the strategic smarts to free a large part of the world out from under the cruel boot of fascism.
As for me, my main suit is truth-telling. That turns out not to be as irresistibly powerful as the younger me thought it was. But it is still clearly an essential component of a strategy for the good. Else, why would "Satan" be so often characterized as "the Deceiver"?
As for "good" maintaining its foothold in humanity, I believe that it is inevitably part of our humanity, because the selective process that crafted us has instilled at least the fundamental rudiments of the good into our nature. More on "the good" below, here, in my response to Jack Miles' comment.
Jack Miles:
- Let me begin with the problem of good. Given that here is so much evil in the world, why is there anything but evil? What explains the survival of good? #9 touches on this key question early in the section entitled "Follow the Pattern of Brokenness," but the exposition changes when one begins at that point. Evil has no meaning apart from good. The core problem is their simultaneous presence in our lives.
- I would like to refine somewhat the discussion, at "The Problem of Evil" as rooted in the Western, mainly Christian understanding of God. I agree that God has been understood as both all-good and all-powerful for most of Western, Christian history and that this understanding has been the taproot of theodicy as an attempt to resolve the resulting problem of evil (as in all questions beginning "How could a good God"?) But here are a few refinements of that history.
- The God of the Tanakh or Old Testament is not all-powerful and all-good. It is he who created the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve into the sin that then led God to condemn them and all their descendants to lifetimes of hard labor, sexual misery, and then death. Was it not evil of God to do that? Why didn't he at least warn them? And could he not have forgiven them rather than punishing them so severely? Rather than the classic problem of evil, this is a problem of good and evil at war in the divine character. Later, in the Book of Isaiah, God admits this:
I am Yahweh, and there is no other,
I form the light and I create the darkness,
I make well-being, and I create disaster,
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